Jamie Oliver talks family, the future of food and making mistakes in the kitchen

Jamie Oliver dropped in to the TODAY show to talk all things family, cooking, diet and the future of food, including waste and how we approach it.

"Naked is what I call my way of cooking" – it's what Jamie Oliver is known for and it doesn't refer to his state of dress. Rather it's the idea that cooking and good food should – and can— be accessible to everyone. There's no doubt that he has inspired millions of people and a whole generation of home cooks, but even after nearly 20 years on our TV screens, we've still got plenty to ask him.

Check out the TODAY show clip above to see Lisa Wilkinson and Karl Stefanovic ask the chef everything we've always wanted to know.

Oliver is in town celebrating the successful buy-back of his Jamie's Italian restaurants in Australia, and also in his ambassadorial role for Woolworth's supermarkets. After twenty years since the launch of his Naked Chef TV show he marvels at how the food landscape has changed.

"Not just from a cheffing point of view. The food industry and the way people feel about food," he says. While he believes that part of his job is 'jazz hands and cooking' he never thought that he would be lucky enough to become the voice of food issues including education, school lunches and tackling waste, to name just a few.

(Supplied)Jamie Oliver, The Naked chef and so much more

"Sometimes it's dark," he says of research that has involved living in the unhealthiest town in America, or seeing where the school food system has let children down. "But it proves that food is linked to pretty much every part of our society," he says. And he's working hard to break the misnomer that eating healthy is harder or more expensive than the alternative.

"The only way to change [that perception] is through knowledge. The luxury and the bliss of knowledge."

He's spent the last two years going to the places where the population is considered to be the healthiest on the plant (as judged by longevity, flexibility and mental acuity into old age), and he found that with the exception of Switzerland, all the healthiest populations come from some of the poorest places in the world. "It's not about money, it's about knowledge and access," says the chef, citing Sardinia and parts of Korea as examples.

"last year I was hanging out with a 117-year-old and she was kind of like Yoda," he jokes in the above TODAY segment. "She was flexible."

He points out that the act of growing food and being connected to its production is also a common factor in these 'healthy' places. "Whoever connects with growing [food] seems to be living very well."

He's keen for a sugar tax in Australia — similar to the one that he helped to introduce in Britain — and when you listen to his reasoning, it's easy to buy into the idea.

"We didn't get that tax because of a cute little story or because I did it," he says, "we did it because of data, because of economics."
Watch the video to hear his full account of why the sugar tax is working and why it will happen in Australia in the next six years.

For Oliver, tackling food waste is also about education and re-learning our lost cooking skills. His uses for stale bread (from sauces to soup thickeners) are inspiring and will have you frying up old bread for dinner in a heartbeat.

The juicy bits

But now to the juicy questions, does the Naked Chef ever eat junk food himself, does he put beetroot and egg in his burgers and who does the cooking in his house with five kids? You'll have to watch the clip above to find out.

The future of food and a healthy population is in clarity and transparency according to the celebrity chef, starting with labelling laws. His argument is simple; we all deserve a blow-out and to be able to enjoy a burger, but when we do that, we need to do it consciously, to know the decision we are making. When labels help to hide sugar contents and additives, then things get murky and the decision to eat well is taken out of our hands. Listen to his argument that food labelling and legislation is paramount to a healthy population and you'll never look at a 'lite' or 'low fat' label the same way again.

He's also got some great words of support for mums and parents feeding families. But his biggest tip (and in his own words) is "get amongst it", and remember to have some fun, because apparently even the Naked Chef makes mistakes, and he's still cooking.